Welsh soldiers feared the gunman behind the Las Vegas massacre was inside the same building as them as they rushed to move people to safety.

They had been dining out at Hooters on the Vegas Strip in the morning when they became aware of the carnage unfolding at a country music Route 91 Harvest festival.

Gunman Stephen Craig Paddock, aged 64, claimed the lives of 59 and injured 520 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Trooper James Astbury, aged 22, of 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards, from Ruthin , North Wales, who usually takes care of the squadron with water,fuel and rations, and the regiment’s Panther driver Trooper Dean Priestley, 26, from Kinmel Bay, near Rhyl , did not hesitate but to put the injured first.

James said: “People started bursting into the restaurant - some with gunshot wounds.”

Dean Priestley, 28 from Kinmel Bay in North Wales,

Trooper Priestley, of Kinmel Bay, who returned from Las Vegas on Saturday and was back at his base in Norfolk, said they had been enjoying a night out in Hooters when the massacre happened.

He said: “We were having food when it all took over. We were having chicken wings and beer. We pretended to the Hooters girls that it was one of the lads’ birthday and they were singing.

Read More

Dean and James were on R&R (rest and recuperation) in Las Vegas and had been on adventure training in Yosemite National Park as more than 100 troops from ‘C’ Squadron where deployed to California on Exercise Diamondback in September, where they took part in operations on Jackals, foot patrols and key leader engagement with the local community.

The injured are helped on Las Vegas Boulevard - the confirmed death toll has risen to at least 50 (Image: Getty Images North America)

An Army spokesman said: “Dean thought the gunman was in the building and started moving people away from there.

“He helped to triage (assess) for injuries and he discovered a girl with a head injury, he moved her to the front where the emergency services started to arrive.

“He assisted where another woman had a serious head injury he moved outside to assist with a man who had a gunshot wound to the lower back.”

A police probe is continuing into why Paddock committed the mass shooting from his suite in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas as it has been suggested he was planning more attacks after further 1,600 rounds of ammunition was discovered in his car in the hotel parking lot.